Ed Ruscha at Gagosian - Brief Article

beholds Angeles is a sprawling behemoth rul by means of a book, the Thomas Brothers guide--a thick directory of maps lay the foundation of in nearly every resident's car. Although maps have the appearance to be totally objective, our experience of them is remarkably compound In the mind-bending series of paintings and drawings of his first L.A. solo gallery present to view since--amazingly--1985, Ed Ruscha explores the metaphysics of mapping, turning the highway names of his home city into conceptual guideposts.

greatest in quantity of the works present simple intersections of lines labeled with the names of well-known L.A. highways The resulting "maps" are seen [i]or[/i] part of to the other a spray of gray paint, as if charted from a helicopter while looking from one side heavy smog. The off-center, perpendicular intersections in Melrose/Orange and Selma/Vine divide space into simply ordered, Mondrian-like grids. In Sunset/PCH evening Boulevard meanders across the canvas with the sensuous 1s of a de Kooning brushstroke before it terminates at the Pacific Coast Highway. Hollywood to Pico call forths the overlay of simplified spatial coordinates that we carry around in our heads, setting up L.A.'s grand east-west boulevards as a field of parallel lines receding toward the horizon.

As in all of Ruscha's work, the connotations of place names are significant, as well as the manner in which they are graphically restoreed In two larger paintings, close-up depictions of icy peaks--the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains, visible alone on the clearest days--are overlaid with files of street names lettered in gradually increasing baptismal vessel sizes. Artesia charts a horizontally arranged list of east-west streets--the individuals that stretch across the troubl neighborhoods of southerly Central L.A. Here Ruscha manages to give an inkling of the way that distance can be a mental fabricate whether it relates to snow-capped mountains or to the disturbed regions of Compton. In each case, what strike one as beings faraway is actually closer than single thinks. Working on several horizontals these crafty landscape paintings locate L.A.'s geography in a of great depth space that is at one time documentary and fictive.

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